"Salvation is of the LORD." -Jonah 2:9

" O my God, my soul is cast down within me: therefore will I remember Thee from the land of Jordan, and of the Hermonites, from the hill Mizar." —Psalm 42:6 [KJV] In times of dejection and distress, the thoughts of a dear Friend, Who has comforted us in times past, tend to alleviate the mind. If we are assured of His love to us, we question not His readiness to assist us. So under the affecting loss of a dear brother, Martha addresses the Saviour, "Lord, if Thou hadst been there, my brother had not died." —John 11:21. Inexpressible blessedness, to live in a holy familiarity with the God of love! How simple are David's words! how freely doth he pour out his complaints, and tell God of his sorrows! though his soul was bowed down within him, heaviness of mind beset him, the sweet sunshine of joy was overcast by the dark cloud of sorrow, yet faith's piercing eye looks through all. Regardless of his own frames and feelings, he has direct recours...

"That as sin hath reigned unto death, even so might grace reign through righteousness unto eternal life, by Jesus Christ our Lord." -Romans 5:21 [KJV] Pause, my soul, and put forth thy fullest thoughts in the contemplation of those two united sources of thy felicity ( -happiness ), marked in this verse: the Father's eternal purpose, in the reign of grace; and the everlasting efficacy and infinite value of thy Jesus' righteousness, to eternal life. None but God Himself can know the fulness and extent of either. I am persuaded, that angels of light can never entertain adequate conceptions of either.  The eternal purpose of God hath bounded the reign of sin; it is but unto death. But those purposes give a further extent to the redemption from death and sin, by Jesus; for the glory of Christ's person, and the worth of His salvation, possess in both a vast overplus, a redundancy of merit, which brings the redeemed into favour and acceptance in Jesus, and...

"So that we ourselves glory in you in the churches of God for your patience and faith in all your persecutions and tribulations that ye endure; which is a manifest token of the righteous judgment of God, that ye may be counted worthy of the kingdom of God, for which ye also suffer." -II Thessalonians 1:4, 5 [KJV] The Lord has chosen that His people should pass through deep and cutting afflictions, for it is through much, or many tribulations, as the word really signifies, "through many tribulations" they are to enter the kingdom of God above, and into the sweetness and power of the kingdom of God below (Acts 14:22) . But every man will resent this doctrine, except God has led him experimentally into it. It is such a rough and rugged path; it is so contrary to flesh and blood; it is so inexplicable to nature and reason, that man, proud, rebellious man, whether he be in a profession or whether he be out of a profession, will never believe that he must ...